The present invention relates to electronic transactions, and in particular, to a system and method for performing financial transactions on a network.
Historically, financial transactions have been primarily a manual process, typically including a customer (e.g., a banking customer) and an employee of a financial institution (e.g., a banking teller). Recently, because of improvements in security systems and protocols, electronic financial transactions have become more common. One common system for performing electronic financial transactions is a financial network, such as the international ATM network. Such networks allow users to perform a variety of transaction without requiring the participation of a financial institution employee (e.g., a teller).
Most national financial networks are card-based. A consumer's bank (the “issuer” of the card) provides the consumer with a plastic card having a magnetic stripe and a numeric password. The consumer can use the card for cash withdrawal and transfer transactions at ATM's around the world. However, advanced functionality such as check withdrawals, immediate, local and non-local deposits, and instant payment on loan accounts are not currently available using existing technologies, such as an international ATM network switch. Therefore, financial institutions must implement their own proprietary networks to implement most advanced functionality. However, “foreign” account holders (e.g., account holders or account holders from other financial institutions) are restricted to a “lowest common denominator” transaction set supported by the international ATM network that provides connectivity between proprietary financial networks. This reduced transaction set does not provide many of the transaction types desired by consumers.
Thus, there is a need for an improved system and method for performing financial transactions on a network.